Friday, April 2, 2010

One hundred years ago, the U.S. government scored an impressive victory over an interstate counterfeiting operation administered by New York-based Mafia boss of bosses Giuseppe Morello.A mountain of evidence gathered over a period of years by Secret Service agent William Flynn secured the conviction of Morello, his lieutenant and brother-in-law Ignazio Lupo and a number of their associates. The 1910 counterfeiting case revealed the methods, the hierarchy and the influence of the American Mafia. In this expanded issue, we look at that landmark case as well as at the incarceration of the Sicilian underworld leaders.

We start with excerpts from the story told by informant Antonio Comito to Secret Service investigators (preview). An out-ofwork printer, Comito claimed that Morello’s Mafia forced him to work at the production of counterfeit American and Canadian currency. Comito was the prosecution’s key witness at the Morello-Lupo trial.

A timeline (preview) shows the significant events during the imprisonment of the Morello counterfeiters. The courtroom testimony of several defense witnesses, including Ignazio Lupo himself, is presented next (preview). Morello’s long prison sentence dethroned him as Mafia boss of bosses and also sent him into a deep depression. We look within surviving correspondence and other prison records for evidence of the jailed underworld leader’s emotional struggle (preview).

Finally, we examine the life and career of William Flynn, whose detective work made him the nemesis of counterfeiters and also the terror of American radicals (preview).

The issue also includes an early Gambino Crime Family membership chart by Bill Feather (preview), Ask the Informer (preview), and A Look Back (preview).

Eighty pages including cover and advertisementsPublished April 2, 2010.

"The reader will pardon me, if, in reading this story of my life in New York, there are errors of language and periods not well expressed. During the latter part of 1908 and a good part of 1909, I had occasion to know many malefactors who horrified me from the very start, and whom I gradually came to fear as I studied their brutal character. I refrained from denouncing these men to the police because I was constantly in danger of losing my life had I done so."

"1909:Nov 15 - Secret Service agents from William Flynn's New York office arrest Giuseppe Morello and a number of his associates, charging them with counterfeiting.Nov 17 - New York Police arrest Ignazio Lupo for extortion."

"Confronted with the prosecution's mountain of evidence against them, counterfeiting defendants Ignazio "the Wolf" Lupo and Giuseppe Morello attempted in early February 1910 to establish alibis... Excerpts from trial testimony held in the National Archives."

Sixteen pagesincluding one and a half pages of notesFour images and one map

"Convicted of counterfeiting, Giuseppe Morello and Ignazio Lupo were incarcerated within the United States Penitentiary at Atlanta, Georgia, on February 21, 1910. They were assigned consecutive numbers in the prison register. Morello, whose reign as boss of bosses of the American Mafia was brought to an end by his conviction, became Prisoner No. 2882. His brother-in-law and Mafia lieutenant Lupo became No. 2883. The two men were locked away in separate cells and had very different experiences while in prison."

In 1910, much of the early Mafia network in New York was dismantled through the efforts of a tenacious and resourceful Secret Service agent named William J. Flynn. Flynn had spent years building a counterfeiting case against Mafia boss of bosses Giuseppe Morello and his henchmen. While Flynn won great notoriety for the successful conclusion of the Morello counterfeiting trial and related prosecutions, that case was just one highlight in a law enforcement career that spanned a quarter-century and included all levels of government.

Researcher Bill Feather provides a chart including 150 known and suspected members of the Gambino Crime Family from the 1910s-40s era. Names, aliases, birth-death-immigration years, birthplaces and underworld ranks are shown.

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